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Today I came into strange problem. Yesterday, as always, I suspended my Ubuntu 14.04 (Unity) laptop for night. Today as I open it up it shows login screen (lightdm) but it is impossible to write password in. I see password field but it is not editable (the coursor does not blink; I do not see dots as I type). I am able to move the mouse coursor. Also, I am able to login into terminal by CTRL+ALT+F1. As I run the "top" command I see that my (not root) process "init" uses 100% CPU.

It would not be such a big issue since I can restart lightdm. However, the main problem is I have opened several Chrome Incognito windows with important tabs in it. I would like to somehow get access to these windows and save open tabs. Is it possible?

I see two solutions:

  1. Somehow unfreeze login screen to normally login.
  2. Forget about login and somehow save Chrome Incognito sessions from the terminal.

Unfortunately I do not know how to do this. I would be very gratefull for any help.

xen
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2 Answers2

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Well do the following. Do not logout from anywhere.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1.

  2. Log on to tty.

  3. Install remote desktop to your computer.

    $ sudo apt-get install xrdp

  4. Log on to Ubuntu with another computer. Use $ ifconfig to list your IP. Login Login

  5. Save all you incognito tabs (right-click on a tab and select "Bookmark all tabs" or hit Ctrl+Shift+D).

  6. On your tty shell, execute

    $ sudo service lightdm restart

  7. You should be logged out of Unity and the login screen would be unfrozen.

Why the workaround? Chromium developers went to a lot of trouble to ensure that Chromium does not save any state information in incognito mode. It's probably possible to write a script to get all open tabs, even incognito, but that'll only get you the URLs. Not worth the effort in my opinion. I would sill like to see if somebody can show how to do it that way.

Community
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xyz
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I seem to have the same problem since a few weeks. Sometimes I can't type the password at the cursor, even when I click there. The workaround is then to click in the top right corner of the screen and select "switch account"; an unfrozen login screen appears.

Sometimes there is no button or place to type or any user interface elements for that matter, just my username and a frozen screen. The workaround I found for this is this: have a guest session running next to normal session. Then use ctrl-alt-F8 to switch to this guest session, something I found out to be possible. Then this takes a while, and then switch account. Then there is an unfrozen login screen.

Only works if there is already a guest session open.

Oh yeah also the computer now doesn't wake up when I open the lit, I have to click the power button.

Everything takes 10 times as long as normal and this is a mayor headache bug, since before it took about 2-3 seconds to resume my session, now I must pay attention not to close my lit if I may need my computer fast at some point, which is, generally, always.

Ubuntu 14.04, thinkpad t440s w/ touchscreen

Frido Emans
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